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Taming Ava
Chapter 2 Best Laid Plans Take Awhile
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Tom Becker or TB as most knew him would never forget the day when Ava called him to tell him that mommy had a needle in her arm and she wouldn't wake up. He'd promptly called 911, sent his assistant to get Ava and continued trial prep for one of the many class actions suits he was lead attorney on.
He had made money the old fashioned way—he sued large corporations on behalf of a large group of plaintiffs and won multi-million dollar settlements that he got to keep big portions of. That was the dirty secret behind class action lawsuits. The victims never got much money, but that was never the point. It was all about the legal fees.
Even in law school, he wasn't under any illusions that law was about right and wrong. It was about twisting legal rules to tell half-truths to win victories and large settlements and with them big fat legal fees.
He'd done his time doing car accidents until a woman came into his small law office and told him of how a vitamin wrecked her life. She was crazy, but he could work with that. That had been his first class action suit. He'd quickly given up car crashes to focus exclusively on class action lawsuits. That was where the real money was.
For him, money was love. The more he made, the more he loved it and the more he wanted. No woman, not even his daughter, could change that. He'd come to grips with the fact that money was the great love of his life. He was just fine with it.
He'd tried to show her love the only way he knew how—showering her with anything she wanted except her independence. He didn't think she was ready to be on her own. She was in her mid-twenties, twenty-five or twenty-six probably, and had never done anything on her own from renting an apartment to buying a car. He did it all for her. That was going to stop.
He needed to do something to fix her so she could start living her own life. She had no idea about the value of money or what it was like to not have any. She was about to find out.
He dubbed his mission Operation Grow Up. Ava was going to grow up or he was leaving every penny of his more than three hundred million dollar fortune to charity.
She was irresponsible, reckless, impulsive, lazy and spoiled with no plan for her life. It didn't matter how Ava got the way she was; what mattered was fixing her.
He'd give her choices; she could go to school and earn her bachelor's degree or go to a trade school and learn something useful. She would then have to work a minimum of two years after that and fully support herself with not a penny of support from him. She could also just find a job and support herself for four years. That was it. She would have to prove she could make her own way in the world without his money.
Another idea suddenly occurred to him. This was even better than making her support herself—she could get married. If she had a husband, he wouldn't feel responsible for her anymore. Maybe the right husband could straighten out his wild child daughter. To tilt the scales in favor of this option, he would only require her to be married for three years. He was a fair man, so he wouldn't require her to stay married permanently.
It was perfect. With luck, she'd find herself a nice husband who could fix her.
Next Up: Wiping the Smirk Off Her Face
Author's Note: I also write a T rated story called Little Toy Bikers and a Woman on the Run. It's got a huge sprawling plot with a central love story of Jax and Scarlett. If you haven't noticed it, you might want to give it a try. It's supposed to be like watching a TV show with short chapters told from multiple characters' POVs.